


Adrift

by Dribbles



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, Reunions, Sliceoflife, Swearing, attempts at fluff, ex - stepbrothers, the ocean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-10-28 20:06:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17793899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dribbles/pseuds/Dribbles
Summary: As the sun sets along the horizon of his mother’s wedding reception, Baekhyun feels an unexpected tap on his shoulder.





	Adrift

_“You awake Yixing?”_  
  
_“I am now you ass”._  
  
_“Fuck you too”._  
  
_“I’ll tell your mum you swore and she’ll believe me because she likes me better”._  
  
_“And I’ll tell your dad about the porn I found on your computer. He’ll probably start sending you to Sunday school. Good little Christian Yixing, I’m sure you’ll make him proud”._  
  
_“I swear to you that was a pop-up!”_  
  
_“Tell it to the judge, Zhang”._  
  
_“Fine you win, what is it?”_  
  
_“…It’s nothing”._  
  
_“No way! You are not serious. Tell me now Baek or suffer the bed squeak!”_  
  
_“You have too much power on the top bunk.”_  
  
_“And I will take full advantage of it mark my words.”_  
  
_“Fine, fine. But I just want to point out, I’m trying to be serious”._  
  
_“You? serious?”_  
  
_“Humor me… Do you think mum and dad are gonna be together forever?”_  
  
_“What is forever anyway? Time is an illusion and the world a series of mirrors reflecting light. We might not even be real, this conversation is just particle waves and vibrations. What is language really but a—”._  
  
_“Just because you read one book, you suddenly think you’re Einstein”._  
  
_“Excuse me Baekhyun… I’ve actually read two”._  
  
_“I hope they break up”._  
  
_“Who?”_  
  
_“Our parents…”_  
  
_“Why?”_  
  
_“I hate having you as a brother”._  
  
_“Alright, you asked for it. One bed squeak coming up!”_  
  
_“Zhang Yixing! NO!”_

 

 

 

-  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Baekhyun wants to complain about the sand in his socks, but his mother looks so happy. Her eyes are closed, captured by laughter, wiping off vanilla frosting from rosy cheeks smiling back, red from the sun and freshly shaven. He looks good without a beard Baekhyun thinks, and he can kind of see what his mother sees in him.  Kindness in the way he whispers I love you when she sings hopeless love songs out loud.  
  
“This is the one, Baekhyun.”  
  
She had said this to him right after she had met the actual love of her life who, writes books about bird watching and Baekhyun had thought he was just another summer fling, passing like the seasons. But it only took one for her to wish for a lifetime, so sure like falling in love was a scientific certainty and its course foreseen in premonitions and crystal balls. He smiles regardless, without any of that scepticism his mother would usually frown at, that whole being an artist thing and finding romance and all its wild depictions and abstract forms beautiful. Baekhyun may not be one himself, but he can appreciate art when he sees its magic galavanting across the shoreline in weathered tool and bare feet.  
  
He remembers these ceramic masks she had made when he was losing his first tooth. They had these big holes for eyes, dark grooves, a trail where her thumbs had buried themselves in the clay. Baekhyun would never look up at where they hung right above the staircase on his way to bed where he’d try to erase their nightmarish glares, and gaping mouths painted the colour of his mother’s sadness. That’s when the first marriage ended, and Baekhyun started to understand how emotion could be crafted from pigment and patient hands. He had tried with gentle encouragement but found the murky world of raw emotion too elusive to pin down and preferred the function of design.  
  
“Does that mean I don’t have to go to those boring ass baseball games anymore?” Baekhyun had asked this after the last one of his mother’s momentary love affairs dissolved after only a couple of weeks. It was a record. He was ex-army, intense with his insistence that Baekhyun should go to the gym with him as if a high protein diet and lifting heavy metal would make him more a man. Passive aggressive in his homophobia, it went by entirely unnoticed by his mother who felt distraught over her guilt, baking Baekhyun his favourite chop chip cookies every day, reminding him how much she loved him the most and swearing off impulsive engagements for good because she was blinded by his biceps.  
  
Baekhyun would call him ‘The General’ behind his back and his mother would try to conceal her snickering, her full-blown laughter exposed after he had packed his bags and left, standing at the door at attention and giving them both a salute goodbye. Baekhyun would galavant around their house the moment the door slammed shut in a parody of military excellence, leg stomps and yelling “sir yes sir!” Because making his mother laugh become the only medicine, he could offer.  
  
Her smile is so brilliant now, fine lines like the rings of a tree inscribed into her expression. The man she loves now points to the sky at a passing seagull and whispers in her ear, probably something about where it's going and what it likes to eat. Baekhyun feels a warm breeze pass through fingers in a small wave, his mother sees him, and she blows him a kiss before she twirls away on the dance floor carried by the wind.  
  
“Hello!” A voice says or rather shouts in a shiver of abruptness, the volume almost bursting an eardrum. He turns but sees no one. Confused, he then feels a tap at his shoulder, attention tugged the opposite direction and growing frustrated with every false move because it feels too familiar, like a prank, so Baekhyun yells back, “yah! Who is it?”.  
  
“It’s me, dummy”, and instead of seeing the distant image of his mother’s dress billow like the crash of waves he sees someone that he never thought he’d see again. He looks hardened by age, sharper edges and broader shoulders but he still has that dumb smirk that still makes him seem fifteen and still has that innate ability to piss Baekhyun off groaning at sight, “sorry I have no idea who you are old man”.  
  
“Ouch. That’s no way to greet your big brother, Baekie”, pinching his cheek in that condescending way he remembers Yixing always seemed to find hilarious if that mischief in the swell of his eyes is anything to go by. “Ew! Don’t call me that. I always hated when you called me that” he says swatting his hands away, “And you were never my brother”. Yixing’s smile is constant, glowing in the light of the orange sun but Baekhyun doesn’t notice, too wrapped up in trying to rub away the prickly feeling in his cheek, “what are you doing here anyway?”  
  
“I was invited, how else would I be here?” and there is an ease in which Yixing speaks that Baekhyun doesn’t remember as if the soft waves tossing about rock pools had a voice.  
  
“You know what I mean”, Baekhyun says, he notices a server pass by with a silver platter. Red wine always helped him in these sort of situations, the ones that made his muscles tense and his brain go blank. Maybe if he had a few more glasses, he would be able to bypass the whole reminiscing part of the conversation and fast forward to the inevitable awkward goodbye.  
  
“I think my dad must have mentioned to your mum that I moved back,” Yixing says and Baekhyun stalls from gulping down the rest of his wine, “when was that?” hiding the tiniest bit of disappointment that could just be indigestion, the wine tasting a little of acid.  
  
“Like a week ago”, and that seems like a drop in a pool when more than ten years have passed. Yixing steals another glass and dangles it in front of Baekhyun’s annoyed expression, “why? You missed me?” Yixing says swiping the wine for himself right before Baekhyun has the chance to catch it and he swallows every last drop, and that mischief. He doesn’t miss it.  
  
Baekhyun scoffs, “oh yeah, I cried my self to sleep every night, mourning your loss, wishing in the depths of my soul that you were back in the top bunk waking me up at 3am to go to the bathroom every night. I know you did it to annoy me”.  
  
“You got me,” Yixing winks and something that resembles the warmth of the sun blooms within Baekhyun. He looks down at his sand-covered shoes and all he can say back now is, “shut up” because what can he really say except comment on the banality of a clear blue sky and perhaps exchange pleasantries and what they do for a living— “So what do you do for a living?” Baekhyun says, interest flying past Yixing’s shoulder finding any excuse to leave. His aunt is swaying, Pina colada in hand and belting out atonal lyrics to a song that is definitely not on the playlist, so that’s a possibility.  
  
Before he even takes in a breath to feign an apology, Yixing starts to honk out that laughter he remembers during late night chats, “you can’t be serious Baekhyun. That’s what you ask me? Might as well talk about the weather. How very unoriginal of you”, and suddenly even the appearance of an apology seems too much for Baekhyun. He aims again at another glass of wine Yixing so charmingly stole from his grasp. Yixing darts in and out like the swirl of wine splashing into the air and all over Yixing’s linen lapels.  
  
“Shit Yixing, I’m so sorry,” he says trying not to laugh, but Yixing just smiles again and says, “Never mind,” punctuated by a lazy smirk. There is a stray jacket he finds hanging loosely from the back of a dining chair and takes it as his replacement. “Thief,” Baekhyun says only slightly distracted from the open collar of Yixing’s shirt, his neck and curve of it. It’s different now.  
  
“I’m only borrowing it,” but it sounds a bit indistinct, Baekhyun hearing the volume of his own breath clash against the current. The jacket is two sizes too big, hands hidden in long sleeves. “You look like a cinder block,” Baekhyun says pointing out the overall oblong effect of wide shoulder pads. “Here let me just…” finishing his sentence by rolling up the cuffs.  
  
“Thanks, Mum” Yixing jokes and Baekhyun decides it's okay to smile because in this light he can see a glint of something genuine in Yixing. Like the look of that last goodbye from a distance, the thunder of aircraft sounding like the end of the world.  
  
“You’re welcome, Einstein”.

 

 

-

  
  
  
  
_“Hey, you packed already?”._  
  
_“Yeah. I just left my toothbrush out”._  
  
_“I’ve never been in an aeroplane. Must be cool to be that high up”._  
  
_“They’re okay. You kinda forget after a while. Then you wake up and your in another hemisphere”._  
  
_“Well… Mum wanted to let you know that dinner is almost ready”._  
  
_“What did she make?”_  
  
_“What do you think she made?”_  
  
_“Bro! No way! Fried chicken?”_  
  
_“And Zhang Yixing shoots and he scores!”_  
  
_“Bro, if I’m gonna miss anything, it’s your Mum’s fried chicken.”_  
  
_“Yeah… I’d miss it too”._

 

-

 

  
  
  
  
“When were you going to tell me you invited Yixing?” Baekhyun was able to pull his mother aside just as she stumbled off the parquetry dance floor in search of another drink, avoiding congratulatory remarks, hopes that this one will finally stick.  
  
“Oh Sweetie I did,” she says cheeks shining with shimmer and bits of glitter, “I told you when we were at the wine tasting”, a hiccup follows as she tries to steady herself on Baekhyun’s forearms. “I literally have zero memory of that day Momma,” having only the slightest memory of being told to spit the wine out after each sip and actively refusing to do so, hence the pain in the side of his head and the total inability to function at work the next day. “You seemed excited at the time. Why wouldn’t you be happy to see your long lost brother? He is so grown up now, you’d forget about all the trouble he caused”.  
  
“By the way, he is not my brother, and sure I would be excited, except I haven’t spoken to him in like a decade. He called me a dummy”.  
  
“And what do you want me to do? Ground him?”  
  
“I mean you could give it a go...”  
  
“Sweetie there is nothing to be afraid of. He was family for goodness sake, and I know he always liked you”, which completely perplexes Baekhyun because his memories seemed to bookmark only the bickering and wrestling matches over the last of the cocoa puffs on kitchen tiles. “He only accepted my invitation when I mentioned you’d be here”.  
  
“Of course I’d be here,” then he remembers something about Yixing’s father passing on messages that seem too far fetched in a different light, “You don’t keep in touch with his dad?”  
  
“I used to, but I haven’t heard anything since he married his assistant. I always knew he liked younger women. He said he liked how small my face was. You know he wanted me to get botox? I mean I _would_ of he paid—”  
  
“You are one to talk, you dated that kid right out of university!”  
  
“And I knew it wouldn’t work out when he started calling me mummy in bed. I mean, look I’ll never judge someone for that, but it was so out of the blue when he was, you know, _down there_ and I just wanted to feel 10 years younger not relive the the trauma of labour pains— I mean birthing you was a beautiful thing but its why you never had any siblings”.  
  
“I literally don’t need to know any of this. Why would you even suggest something like that?” hiding his face while she giggles out hiccups.  
  
“Hindsight is 20/20 after all, and Yixing doesn’t really talk to his father anymore after their fall out. That stubborn bastard. He never understood the two of you”, feeling a caress to his cheek, Baekhyun comes out of his hiding place, confusion in the way his mother recounts something he never really knew, perhaps her tongue is loosened by her tipsy mind.  
  
“Wait a minute. Did Yixing tell you all this?”  
  
“He messages me all the time. He always asks about you, and I tell that boy to just get it from the horse's mouth, but I guess he never got round to it”.  
  
“He asks about me? What about me?”  
  
“If your happy, Sweetheart.”

 

 

 

-

  
  
  
  
  
_“Come on Baekhyun. They won’t notice we’re gone”._  
  
_“I just don’t feel like it, Yixing”._  
  
_“It’ll be fun. Sooyong is going to buy us alcohol. I'll get you drunk~”._  
  
_“Of course Sooyong is going to be there”._  
  
_“What that’s supposed to mean? She is nice”._  
  
_“She is obsessed with you. I just want to hurl up my kidneys when she makes those heart eyes at you as if you’re her personal god bathing in heavenly light. It drives me insane”._  
  
_“And why wouldn’t she be obsessed?”_  
  
_“You just answered your own question Einstein—”._  
  
_“Anyway, who cares if she’ll be there. All my other friends will be there too”._  
  
_“And hang out with all the other geriatrics? No thanks.”_  
  
_“Fine suit yourself. But promise you won’t rat on me”._  
  
_“Do my laundry for four weeks, and we have a deal”._  
  
_“Two?”_  
  
_“Three?”._  
  
_“Deal”._

 

 

  
  
-

 

 

  
  
Yixing was always careless with cutlery and other potential causes of death. He is balancing the end of a steak knife with a finger while Baekhyun’s middle school cousin’s look on, astounded, cheering when it goes on for more than a minute. And the moment the knife falls on stained tablecloth they immediately reject the warning to not try this at home and Baekhyun springs to action. “Okay that enough guys, just because Yixing here didn’t chop a finger off doesn’t mean I won’t do it for him,” he says snatching away their fun, which now makes him the bad guy.  
  
“Yixing Hyung is so cool. You suck cousin Baekhyun!”.  
  
“This is the thanks I get when I save you from your own stupidity. Now run along and dab or whatever you kids do”.  
  
“Dabbing is so three years ago”, Yixing says, which now makes him the good guy because they all laugh like its the funniest shit in the world. But then again, when adults have all the fun, all they have is themselves and smartphone distractions. Baekhyun knows because he always found weddings boring, calculating his escape from the monotonous band and drunk uncles giving impromptu speeches about lost love. He would hide under tables or explore hidden rooms because he’d seen it all before and he kind of knew he’d see it again. Love for Baekhyun was a fun trick, a spectacle that ended with confetti, soggy and trodden on. “Go ahead Yixing. Pander to gen Z. Just know they’ll turn on you the moment you quote the wrong meme, and when they do, I won’t be there to pick you up”.  
  
Yixing stands from his throne, his court of brainwashed youths pulling at his sleeve to stay and show them another death-defying stunt, “sorry kids. Baekhyun is right. Don’t play with sharp objects. Maybe start with butter knives first and work yourselves up”, and for some strange reason, Baekhyun doesn’t cringe from the sight of that wink, that wink that’s only for him.  
  
A screech of microphone feedback distorts the air and regardless of how many times it happens on schedule his ears sting from it and all he wants to do is leave and avoid another one of his uncle’s melancholy ramblings.   “Do you wanna go somewhere?” Yixing whispers, the sound shaking through him. He nods, eyes concerned and tracing the horizon, the desire to move closer to it, catching bitten smiles at the corner of his eye.  
  
When they start to sink into the sand, Baekhyun leaves his shoes by a shock of tall grass, each sock tucked in neatly. Yixing’s were long gone, thrown haphazardly probably in puddles of champagne. At the shoreline, Yixing seems enraptured, lost in the infinite horizon, and Baekhyun can’t get it out of his head.. Yixing asks about him. Asks if he is happy. Is he happy? “I wonder what’s beyond there?” Yixing points as if a child still amazed by the vastness of the earth. “More water?” Baekhyun says, debating whether his feet should slip into the waves, foaming just beyond his toes. “Yeah, but imagine what’s down there. A whole other universe. Alien fish and plastic bottles and hundred-year-old sunken ships”, He says taking a flat stone and hurling it as far as it can go but not far enough, “I wonder how far you would have to swim to reach land?”  
  
“You’re standing on land, Yixing,” Baekhyun says curling toes into the wet sand avoiding mops of seaweed.  
  
“What about if I reach some deserted island and I have to survive the wild?”  
  
“What about it?”  
  
“Well, wouldn’t that be an adventure?” Yixing says, water up to his knees, black slacks drenched with the smell of salt, and Baekhyun always hated the way it would sting his eyes, knocking down abandoned sand castles to his mother’s soothing words like chamomile.  
  
The chill of a splash wakes him, feeling wetness run down his cheek and hair and everywhere, and Yixing is already running away like a fugitive. Baekhyun, completely affronted bares his teeth, “yah! You ass! You know I hate when you do that!” Without a thought, he rolls up his pants and chases Yixing down the end of beach towards towering boulders. He tackles him to the ground, a satisfying arm bending into waist and Yixing can’t stop that obnoxious laughter when he starts flinging sand into his hair. Baekhyun knows that’s the sound of his failure to keep it together, to just ignore the poking and prodding, Yixing so easily getting under his skin.  
  
“You spend too much time playing video games. You need the sun”.  
  
Yixing had said this when he forced him to picnic with friends at the local pool. A posse of Uber cool teens dressed in streaks of pink and bare skin because that was the trend, and then there was Baekhyun feeling like an imposter with a newly born pimple and rash shirt because he burned easily. He would have stunned them with his wit and confidence if only their unimpressed stares hadn’t stapled his mouth shut. They kept talking about bands he never heard of, rolling his eyes at the mention of life-changing lyrics that sounded more like fortune cookies. He remembers Yixing, hooking him into conversations he had no reference for and maybe he was doing it so Baekhyun wouldn’t feel like a loser. But it was already too late.  
  
“Don’t mind me. I’ll just sit here and admire the view. Chlorine really doses it for me”.  
  
“It does, does it?” Yixing had said, something sly brimming at the eyes. Then arms pulling him in the direction of total embarrassment, flying into that piss infested pool, wanting to drown in it instead of having to face the humiliation of pointed fingers. Hiding red eyes from everyone. Especially Yixing.  
  
If he flings himself into the waves now, maybe the tide would take him to that deserted island of Yixing’s imagination.  

 

  
  
  
-

 

 

  
  
  
_“Baekhyun? Why you home so late?”_  
  
_“I stayed back to talk to a teacher.”_  
  
_“Have you been crying?”_  
  
_“It’s nothing”._  
  
_“Baekhyun don’t run away. Baekhyun— unlock the door please”._  
  
_“Can’t you just let me go to the bathroom in peace. It’s like the moment you guys showed up in my life I’m never alone. Just leave me alone, Yixing”._  
  
_“I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’s a good idea”._  
  
_“I think its a great idea. In fact, I think it’s the best idea I’ve ever had”._  
  
_“Baekhyun please open the door. I won’t ask questions. If you are… hurt- just— let me in please.”_  
  
_“You swear?”_  
  
_“I swear. Pinky promise with a cherry on top and extra whipped cream”._  
  
_“And chocolate source?”_  
  
_“Anything”_  
  
_“Fine…”_

 

 

  
-

 

 

  
  
“Just step on that one there.”  
  
“If I do that I’ll crack my head open.”  
  
“Baekhyun, trust me. There is a flat part of the rock, put your right foot there” Yixing yells, already perched on the highest rock and Baekhyun has to strain his neck to scowl at him, the effort worth it, he thinks. The reason he finds himself grappling for his life had depended on Yixing’s promise of a surprise lurking beyond the cliff, but that was a blatant lie. But they had already walked too far down the beach it seemed Yixing’s arms had swayed him in favour of adventure. He does as told and hoists himself up. Yixing smiles again, and Baekhyun wonders as he calms his breath and soothes his wrists if Yixing has ever been anything but genuine. He squints his eyes slightly if it’s just a trick of the dimming light, but he can’t find the mockery he thought was always there. A kindness that comes in the way Yixing helps, thumbs pushing nursing the strain lingering in his hands.  
  
“See. I’m told you to trust me.”  
  
“Don’t hold your breath,” but he almost does when Yixing holds him by the shoulders and inches closer, a glint of wonder sparking from the flutter of an eyelash. His grip turns him around, and the view strikes him as something monumental. A sunset in its final moments, when the sky bleeds orange till it’s drained and all that’s left are streaks of actual lilac. Avoid of colour encompassing his whole vision, and maybe that’s what his mother means when she looks into the opaqueness of oils or the mass towering of stone and loses the strength to speak. “It reminds me of a painting I saw once”, he says to himself, a murmur between distracted thoughts that have something to do with the sound of a zipper.  
  
“What are you doing Yixing?”  
  
“We’re at the beach, aren’t we? So I’m going for a swim” he continues to pull down his trousers, slapping against the rock then quickly begins to unbutton his loose shirt. Baekhyun doesn't really know why he looks away, a flash of shadows catching the form of his chest. It’s different than before. Less fuzzy with its soft edges or maybe that's just his memory.  
  
“No fucking way. We are too high up” Baekhyun says, berating himself for believing Yixing would be anything other than the most stupid person on earth.  
  
“It’s not that high. The water looks deep enough”.  
  
“This is a terrible idea. What if you actually die?”  
  
“Is Byun Baekhyun actually worried about me. I’m touched”.  
  
“I’m worried that the cops will think I pushed you off, which is very likely by the way.”  
  
“Cool. I’ll see you down there!”  
  
And then he jumps, what would seem like a valiant leap of faith scored by an orchestral swell and ending in a pin-drop splash. Baekhyun doesn’t know what to do, actually panicking via a series of expletives yelled against a torrent of strong wind, utterly pointless. But then he doesn’t see the bob of Yixing’s head emerge, frantic in his search, seeing more and more deep-blue and whispers of white.  
  
“Yixing?” He yells again because reason no longer functions in the mind of total fucking dread beating the fuck out of his chest, heart thumps feeling like the drum of alarm. Reminders that dreams don’t have consequences when you wake up sweating, but monsters still exist in the real world. And even though Baekhyun resents this feeling, his fingers start pulling at his tie, annoyingly tight and time seems to be doubling in speed so he just says fuck it because he’d rather have Yixing living with that dopey smile on his face saying, “glad you could join me”, than one that stops existing at all. He’ll take the risk.  
  
Mid-air, he can’t feel his face and the and impact is painless, bubbles soft and blurring his vision. The water is heavy, and maybe he should have taken off something if he is supposed to be saving Yixing potentially drowning somewhere. He reaches the surface, breathing in deep his voice almost lost to the sea. “Yixing?” He yells again hoping his fears are just fears and they’ll stay buried at the bottom with the alien fish and sunken ships.  
  
“Baekhyun over here!” he hears, that voice light as air and when he turns he sees Yixing atop a small rock covered in barnacles and waving him over as if nothing was wrong.  
  
“What the fuck Yixing?”  
  
“What?” looking deceptively innocent.  
  
He starts his awkward breaststroke, avoiding gulps of water because his words already taste of salt, “you totally did that on purpose! I thought you drowned and I actually felt bad for you”. Yixing holds out his hand when Baekhyun grasps for solid rock and decides to take it because swimming fully clothed is exhausting.  
  
“I would never pretend to drown, your just paranoid because stuff like this freaks you out”.  
  
“Excuse me for having a conscience,” he says not really understanding what Yixing means by ‘stuff like this’, as if he noticed a pattern of behaviour and remembered it, a footnote highlighted in a forgotten textbook, last stamped a decade ago. He also didn’t know why that particular statement holds so much more weight in his chest than it seems to hold in Yixing’s eyes, and maybe he was reading too much into it. There is another gust of bright cold wind, and Baekhyun feels the chill wrap through him, “fuck it’s cold” he says sniffing, still drenched and shivering. Then his shoulders still, the heat of touch rubbing at his arm, and a smile so much more endearing when water droplets hang from cheeks and the tip of a nose— “Wanna check out the hermit crabs?”  
  
“Check out what?”  
  
“Look, see?” Yixing says, pointing to a patch of rock pools and his voice is so tender. Baekhyun takes a closer look. Wants to hear it again. There is a whole line of them, delicate limbs, each bearing coiled-shells, speckled like paint. Yixing speaks behind his shoulder, fascinated like seeing something for the first time.  
  
“You know that when a hermit crab outgrows their shell, they have to look for a new one. Sometimes they do this thing where they line up, biggest to smallest and like, give away their shell to the one in front. Like a train. They work together, so everyone gets a new home. Isn’t that cool?”  
  
“You learn that from one of your books book Einstein?”  
  
“No. I should know, I studied marine biology”.  
  
“Actually?” Baekhyun says, still shivering as the sun disappears completely. It's so dark Baekhyun only knows Yixing is still there because he keeps him warm, arm over his shoulder. “Is that what you do now?”  
  
“No”  
  
“What do you mean no?”  
  
“I mean I don’t do it anymore.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Politics… Lack of funding… boring stuff like that”.  
  
“Do you want to go back to it?”  
  
“Maybe”  
  
“What do you do now?”  
  
“I’m here with you. Duh?” Yixing laughs, but its exhausted of its energy and something happens then that only ever happened once before. Yixing rests his cheek on Baekhyun’s shoulder and pulls him into a hug. Both arms cling at him and its the brightest he has ever seen Yixing’s heart glow, the strongest he ever felt it beat. This affection keeping him still, tethered to stone as the tide rises around them. It why he hugs Yixing back scared that if he let go, he would be taken by the sea, set adrift. It doesn’t even feel that cold anymore, in the dark.  
  
“Baekhyun”, Yixing says against his neck, sniffling when he burrows in further, and the sounds around him start to resemble take off, his hand pressed to the glass as Yixing flew away. Realisation in his reflection. Why he hated the implication of a brotherly love. Why he wanted to hold on that much longer before his father pulled him away. Why he cried in his mother’s bed that night, her voice soothing like chamomile, always like chamomile, its scent lulling him to sleep like it was just a nightmare with no consequence.  
  
“I’ve been feeling a bit lost Baekhyun”, and he grabs hold tighter, as if unwilling to let the sincerity of his omissions slip away.  
  
“That’s okay Yixing”.  
  
“I’m sorry it took me so long to come back. I’ve been so many places. My job. The ocean is so big you know?”.  
  
“What happened with your dad?”  
  
“He won’t acknowledge me. The good Christian son can’t like boys.”  
  
“Is that all? Poor excuse if you ask me” and Baekhyun tries to smile through it because he knows the complete disappointment of other people and how it manifests as your own. They all tell you to be a particular type of normal and punish you with threats when you can’t reprogram the way you just are. But Yixing laughs anyway because he must remember and Baekhyun feels a bit less useless.    
  
“I always liked your mum. She knew it before I did”.  
  
“She likes you too”.  
  
“She seems really happy today.”  
  
“I hope so.”  
  
“Baekhyun, are you happy?”  
  
“Sometimes. I mean… what is happiness anyway but a chemical reaction in the brain. When you think about it, emotions don’t really exist because life is just a simulation the mind invents to blind us from the real world where we are just harvested for food by supercomputers which have reached the singularity”.  
  
“You making fun of me?” Yixing says, chin up and lips so close to touching the surface of Baekhyun’s cheek. A feeling that undercuts attempts to steer the boat from turbulence, the conversation making him motion sick, its curves abstract and from another angle feels like excitement. The look in Yixing’s expression so open, as if seeing distant horizon’s and plotting out adventures.  
  
“Maybe just a little.”

 

 

  
  
-

 

 

  
  
  
_“There was this guy who has been harassing me at school. He roughed me up, but that’s all I swear.”_  
  
_“Are you going to tell the principal?”_  
  
_“No way. I don’t want to make it a big deal.”_  
  
_“Baekhyun. I know that but, this guy is just a scared little nincompoop. If you don’t tell anyone, he’ll get away with it.”_  
  
_“They won’t believe me… he calls me names. And they might be true.”_  
  
_“Poor excuse if you ask me.”_  
  
_“This is why I didn’t want to bring it up.”_  
  
_“I’m sorry. Look, you just…”_  
  
_“It’s okay you don’t have to play big brother with me. I’ll be fine.”_  
  
_“I’m not. You could be anyone, and I would still think the same”._  
  
_“What if I told you something about me and, it changes…”_  
  
_“What, did you murder someone?”_  
  
_“The only person I would murder is you”._  
  
_“See? Even when you wish for my death sentence, I still like you Baekie.”_

 

  
-

 

  
  
There is thunder in the distance. Rain falls, and they find shelter in a cave, and Baekhyun stops Yixing from venturing further, “let’s just wait it out” he says, holding onto Yixing’s hand in pitch blackness, the texture of smooth stone in the other.  
  
“Don’t you want to see how far it goes?”  
  
“I’m tired now”, tugging Yixing to sit with him, looking out at a perfect archway onto dense rainfall and the moon with all its unclear edges. It's all they can hear, as it echoes down an unknown path. He wonders if the party is still going if his mother is still dancing and drawing images with the point of her toes. If she is so wrapped up in genuine happiness that will last the rest of her lifetime.  
  
“Your clothes are probably washed out to sea,” he says to Yixing, the thought hitting him at that moment, “Oh yeah” Yixing finding humour in his bare skin. “You know… after I got off that plane, that time, they lost my luggage. My dad was furious, threatened to sue the airline. But I was almost like, relieved. Like I could start a new. I hated that we had to leave. That my dad made me. I would have stayed. But if I couldn’t then I’d rather forget about what could have been you know? I guess I'm like those hermit crabs, ditching the weight on my back for a new place to go”, and when Yixing talks Baekhyun listens, hearing each inflection of regret ring out. “I’m almost thirty, and there are no more shells on the beach for me to call home,” it's strange seeing Yixing stretch out a weak hand with a timid smile only to reach Baekhyun’s finger. Baekhyun lets him, lets that gentle touch feel over each bump and indentation. Lets Yixing draw him in closer like he was always able to really. “I’ve missed you Baekhyun”, lips by his neck, resting there while he takes a breath. Baekhyun can feel it there, constant.  
  
“I know this might seem like a leap but, I really want to kiss you now”.  
  
Baekhyun is back on that rock, facing the water bellow, a horrendous projection of his bones breaking, and limbs pulled from their roots as they tumble and crash against rocks. But if he just skews the image, cutting it up and rearranges it, all deconstructed and flipped on its side the pain looks more like a feeling, one that is enigmatic and a beautiful morning. The water was so soft when it caught his fall, like a droplet of rain and he hasn’t even lifted a foot closer to the edge. He wants to feel it again. So when he leans close, the air turns quiet and moonbeams illuminate eyes, waiting patiently for a reply.  
  
“Then kiss me.”  
  
It’s the softest kind of happiness, like bubbles rising to the surface. Yixing lets it linger, opening his mouth and Baekhyun tastes the sweetness of salt. He licks it up, tongues just meeting at the tip. Why was he ever so afraid of something so blissful it tickles, giggling into Yixing’s smile. They kiss again, trembling lips falling deeper when Yixing sounds out the need for more and Baekhyun holds on, so Yixing stays anchored to his arms. To a home.

 

 

  
-

 

 

  
  
_“Baekhyun, don’t be rude. Say hello to your new brother.”_  
  
_“I told you, never to say that. He is not my brother, Mum. Geez”_  
  
_“Then he can be your friend, right?”_  
  
_“I guess.”_  
  
_“Hello, I’m Yixing.”_  
  
_“Hey…_  
  
_“So…”_  
  
_“So?”_  
  
_“What kinda stuff you into Baekhyun?”_  
  
_“I don’t know… video games”_  
  
_“Oh Thank god! You don’t like sports do you?”_  
  
_“Do I look like a brainless idiot?”_  
  
_“I mean, I guess it depends on who's looking.”_  
  
_“MUM! Yixing said I look like a brainless idiot”._


End file.
